Contents

Personal life

Fischbach was born at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.[2] His father, who is of German descent, served in the U.S. military, where he met Fischbach's mother, who is of Korean descent.[3] After his birth, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.[3] He attended Milford High School where he was a member of the school's marching band, playing the trumpet.[8] He has an older brother, Thomas Jason Fischbach (known as Tom), who is an artist and author of the webcomic Twokinds.[2][3][9] While Tom Fischbach is featured in some videos and streams he mostly stays away from allowing his face to be filmed.[10] After a visit to Korea in 2018, he revealed more about the Korean side of his family.[11] His grandfather was born and raised in what is now North Korea, fleeing to Seoul before the breakout of the Korean War, and had seven daughters. One of his cousins, Hyung-bae, is an actor in Korea.

YouTube career

Style

Markiplier has been known for his sensationalized video game commentary, involving yelling, screaming, cursing, and even crying during his Let's Play videos. He does not censor the profanity in his videos, although he often subtitles his curses as "duck" (sometimes "luck") for "fuck" and "itch" for "bitch". He is known for branding his channel with a pink mustache (a reference to his alter ego, Wilford Warfstache) and has since dyed his hair pink, blue, and red.[17][18][19]

History

Early years and switch to MarkiplierGAME (2012–2013)

Fischbach first joined YouTube on March 6, 2012,[25] creating a channel under the username "Markiplier", and uploaded his first video on April 4, 2012.[26] Fischbach's first series was a playthrough of the video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent. After playing several other game series, including Penumbra and Dead Space, YouTube banned Fischbach's AdSense account. Though he appealed to YouTube as a last effort, the appeal was ultimately lost.[27] Because of this, a new and current channel was created on May 26, 2012[28] and dubbed MarkiplierGAME.

Channel growth and move to Los Angeles (2014)

Markiplier in 2014

In 2014, the MarkiplierGAME channel was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at number 61.[29] That year, Fischbach announced he was planning to move to Los Angeles, California, to be able to be closer to other resources for his channel, such as the YouTube Space and other content creators.[30] Fischbach and fellow YouTuber Jenna Mae appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2014 following backlash that Kimmel received regarding jokes he had made about YouTube and Let's Play videos.[7] In 2015, he was rated sixth in a list of the twenty most influential celebrities among teenagers in the United States.[31]

Hiatus and breaking 10 million subscribers (2015)

Beginning in 2015, Fischbach lived with fellow YouTubers Daniel Kyre and Ryan Magee, who created and ran the YouTube sketch comedy and music channel Cyndago. Matt Watson from Kids W/ Problems later joined Cyndago after they moved to Los Angeles. Their work was noted for having unexpected endings and dark, often disturbing, humor.[32][33] Cyndago was disbanded following the death of Daniel Kyre.[34] At the time of their disbandment, the group had done forty sketches and fourteen original songs, many of them featuring Fischbach.[32] After the death of Daniel Kyre and disbandment of Cyndago, Fischbach temporarily halted uploads and went on hiatus from September 17, 2015 to October 5, 2015.[35] His return was shortly followed by the channel reaching 10 million subscribers on October 15, 2015.[36] Watson and Magee moved on to create a gaming channel called SuperMega.[37]

Quitting alcohol and continued growth (2015–present)

In late 2015, Fischbach announced in a video that he had chosen to abstain from alcohol because of a deficient enzyme important to the process of breaking down alcohol. The decision came after an incident where he suffered a transient ischemic attack and had to be taken to the hospital, and was advised by the doctors to do so. He said that because of this a popular series of his, Drunk Minecraft, would no longer be produced.[38]

In September 2015, Fischbach dyed his hair pink for a charity along with Jacksepticeye.[39] He later dyed his hair to blue in November 2015 and then red in March 2016[40] and back to his natural black hair color on December 29, 2016 in time for 2017.[41]

In January 2016, Fischbach signed to Revelmode, a subnetwork to Maker Studios, along with other YouTubers such as Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie. Revelmode was disbanded in early 2017 as a result of PewDiePie being cut from Maker Studios. He subsequently signed to another Maker Studios sub-network, Polaris.

Throughout 2016, Fischbach moved some of his focus to comedy sketches, showing his aspiration of improvisational theatre. In 2017, Fischbach posted an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure-style video titled "A Date With Markiplier", which was well received by fans.[43][44] The YouTuber also surpassed 15 million subscribers that year.

In late 2016, Fischbach formed a team, nicknamed "Teamiplier", to assist in the creation of his videos and more high-quality sketches, including his girlfriend Amy, and his friends Ethan, Tyler and Kathryn.[45]

On March 29, 2018, Fischbach announced[46] that his YouTube channel had surpassed 20 million subscribers.

On June 19, 2018, Fischbach's step-niece, Miranda,[47] was killed in a car accident at the age of 19.[48] He released a video 5 days later on June 24 titled "update" announcing the news and that he would not be able to make videos for a while.[49] Two days later on June 26, Fischbach released a video titled "Special Message from Miranda's Dad", where Mark talked more about Miranda and Miranda's dad, Michael, thanking Fischbach's fanbase.[50] The same day, Mark started a GoFundMe campaign to pay for funeral expenses for Miranda's family, where the expected goal of $15,000 more than doubled within 9 hours.[48]

Tours

In 2017, he embarked on his first improv tour, known as the "You're Welcome Tour",[55] along with Ethan Nestor (CrankGameplays), Wade Barnes (LordMinion777), Tyler Scheid (Apocalypto12) and Bob Muskens (muyskerm), initially on a short four-date trip in mid 2017 before stretching to a full tour across North America, Australia[56] and Europe in October 2017 through to 2018.

Philanthropy

Markiplier has done multiple charity streams and fundraisers with other YouTubers, friends and by himself. With the support of his fans, he has been able to donate to many different charities that benefit many different interests. Forbes reported in 2017 that Fischbach and his fans had helped raise roughly $3 million for charity in past fundraising streams.[57] On the site Tiltify.com, which he uses for donating to the causes the total amount raised on his current profile as of April 30, 2018 is $1,506,793.81.[58] Separately he also created a sock bundle of "Markisocks", with all proceeds going to the charity "The Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation" (EBMRF) during a 24-hour sale.[59] In March 2018, in celebration of surpassing the 20 million subscriber milestone, Fischbach announced that he would donate all proceeds from a 48-hour sale of his newly created "Tasteful Nudes" Charity Calendar to the Cancer Research Institute. Calendar sales raised $492,819 for the charity.[60]